The Walk
by coyotegrrrl18
Summary: Gail goes to Fight Night after leaving Holly and her med school pals at The Penny during/after 5x03
1. Chapter 1

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* * *

_I could be contended_

_I don't need to suffer_

_You're beautiful _

_And good to talk to_

_You make an impression_

_ You take my attention_

_ When you touch my skin _

_I smell disaster_

_Step away, (Step away) Walk away _

_(All I want is the real thing)_

_Step away, (Step away) (It should be me) Walk away _

_ (And you)_

- Eurythmics

She should have known better, Gail decided as she walked into Fight Night. Maybe Nick was right after all, maybe she just wasn't girlfriend material. She laughed bitterly to herself, shaking her head and taking a moment to stop and make sure her happy-face mask was firmly in place. She couldn't afford to have anyone asking stupid questions right now. How could she have been so blind? That was what hurt the most, she decided, as she took a deep breath and walked into the crowd. Just because she had never felt this way about anyone before, didn't mean anything. Didn't she know by now she wasn't the kind of girl that anyone would actually want to be with? How could she have let herself believe that this would be different? Well fuck Holly dead! And her snotty, asshole friends too! But maybe this was for the best. Better to find out now, than to let this little charade continue until Holly fell for someone else, someone who Holly didn't think was stupid and uneducated, someone in Holly's league, someone Holly would want to get serious about. And then she would be pushed out in the cold again, like all of the other times, except this time it might kill her.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She turned it off with out bothering to look at it. Anyone she might want to talk to was here anyway.

Oliver greeted her, handing her a drink.

WHAT THE… she spit the disgusting sweet wine back into the glass.

"Where's your girl?" He asked

"Don't ask!" She shot back at him, earning a concerned fatherly look that said, we'll talk later...

She braced herself for the advice that didn't come. As Oliver went off to sit with the other White Shirts, she realized that he was as nervous about tonight going well as Chris had been earlier. She looked up to see Dov smile and wave at her from across the room. This was where she belonged! Not with a bunch of stuck up doctors who would always question her intelligence and look down at her. She didn't need them anyway!

After successfully navigating past the bar without having anyone ask too many questions, and passing the nauseating wine off to Wes's aggravating partner, she found Dov and Traci ringside. Traci had just started asking her about Holly when the fight began.

What the..? Nick? No, that wasn't right. Nick was the trainer not the fighter. She looked across the ring to see Oliver's head snap around and his eyebrows shoot up in concern as the fight was announced. Where was that stupid rookie? How could he do this to them? To Oliver? Maybe the universe was trying to tell her tonight that you just couldn't trust anybody.

Fuck.

She needed a real drink, and she needed it now! As if reading her mind, Traci reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a flask. She drank deeply before handing it to Gail and cheering Nick on.

Scotch.

Thank God!

As Gail lowered it from her lips, the inscription on the flask flashed in the light, making her freeze, the impact of it hitting her hard before she handed it back.

_"Jerry Barber, Groom.", _was all it read.

And there it was. Someone had truly wanted Traci. And Gail had fucked that up too. She had to get out of here! She was toxic. She ruined everything she touched. And to think, for one moment she had allowed someone to give her the false hope that she could be different, be better. But for now, she realized, even as she plastered a smile on her face and pretended to be having a good time, she had to get the fuck out of here!

Nick was going down, and going down hard! She and Traci and Dov were all yelling at him to fight, when she saw him look across the room. The look of defeat on his face was clear even before his opponent landed the final blow. Andy and Sam. Of course they had to show up now. Just one more reason for her to dislike the traitorous little bitch. And that was her cue to go.

* * *

Once again Gail found herself sitting on the ledge behind the stairs, feet dangling over the five story drop, bottle of tequila held loosely between her legs. It had been a while since she had been here, drinking and hiding and thinking. Nine weeks if she let herself think about it. Nine weeks since Ford had changed everything. Nine weeks since she had so desperately kissed Holly in the interrogation room and allowed herself to love, and to hope.

She took a deep pull on her bottle and let the liquor burn all the way down to the hollow pit in her stomach. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wood of the shed behind her.

Fuck.

Cold bit into her fingers and nose as it began to snow again. Her ears were numb and her feet were turning into painful blocks of ice in spite of the thick wool socks she wore. She kicked her legs, enjoying the way her heels made a painful thud against the brick. Tears burned in her eyes as tequila burned the back of her throat. They left hot, silent trails down her cold, red cheeks. Her chest felt like someone had crushed all of her ribs under a red hot iron weight.

Holly.

What did it matter if she had been just another notch in Holly's lesbian bedpost? Another straight girl turned. Fun. Right?

Fuck.

How could she have let herself fall so fast, so deep? Well that was over now. Never again. She needed to close that door, walk away and never look back. Yup. That's just what she would do.

Get yourself together Gail!

She sucked in a ragged breath, wiped her runny eyes and nose on the sleeve of Holly's hoodie she had stolen weeks ago, and threw the empty bottle she was holding into the dumpster below. It landed with a satisfying crash of glass shattering against metal. She pulled the hood up over her head breathing in the comforting scent of Holly's hair.

Yup. Time to go.


	2. Chapter 2

"**_I'm no good at being noble,_**

**_but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people_**

**_don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. "_**

* * *

Never again. No matter what happened she had promised herself she would never run away from Holly ever again. No matter how much it hurt, Holly deserved to have her stay and try to work it out.

When it came, it was worse than that, worse than she thought it ever could be, worse than all of the crazy heartbreaking scenarios she had imagined when she had braced herself to tell Holly about Sophie. Somewhere the gods of cruel fate were laughing at her, this she knew for sure. Of all the things her mind had come up with, this certainly was not one of them. Before it happened she would have been shocked, overwhelmed and overjoyed to find out that the person she was still so deeply, painfully in love with not only returned her feelings, but wanted her enough to ask her to run away with them. Just eight days before it all went so terribly wrong, she had finally opened up and told Holly how she felt. But Holly had been seeing someone else, and with "Goodnight Gail" had walked away and out of her life, for good, or so she thought. And now there were other things to consider.

Holly had made her want to be a better person. When Holly had come striding into her crime scene and into her life, suddenly she had started to feel things again. Feelings she thought had died long ago. She wasn't sure when it had started, when she had first laid the mortar and brick and reinforced steel walls of her fortress, but there were certainly benchmarks. When Nick had left her standing at the altar in Vegas, she had added another layer. When her mother blamed her for driving him away, another wall. On the day her classmates at the academy discovered she indeed came from Toronto Police royalty as her mother arrived one day and put her painfully on display before them, as they accused her of not earning her place, of being there because of her name not her abilities, making her feel like she didn't belong, she surrounded herself with a mine field. After Perrick she shut down completely, closing the gaps and resigning herself to being numb and feeling dead on most days. She still didn't know how, but Holly simply waltzed through her minefield, and penetrated her fortress, and cracked open her doors, letting in light and sound, letting all of those imprisoned feelings escape, and bringing her back to life. Now that had happened, she knew there was no going back. Traci always said that when Jerry had sacrificed his life for hers he had died for something important. She didn't like to talk about it, but she lived with the guilt of that every day. And now with Sophie, she had the opportunity to start to make good on repaying that debt.

Then one day, without warning, suddenly Holly was back. Not just back, but kissing Gail with the ferocity of a hurricane, battering Gail's senses, making her toes curl and her mind go blank.

"Wait! What the hell is going on, Holly?" she had managed to breathe out as she pushed Holly away and tried to get the world to stop spinning out of control.

"I missed you!" Holly said the words she longed to hear, but never thought would come, as Holly took off her glasses making Gail's heart beat faster.

"What about your someone else?" She had weakly demanded, knowing that ultimately it didn't matter, that she would give in to almost anything if Holly touched her again, and hating herself for needing Holly that much.

"We broke up. She said I wasn't over my ex…", was all it took to shatter any small amount of self control she might have had.

She had grabbed on to Holly like a lifeline, breathed her in like oxygen, and kissed her as if the apocalypse was here and the very world was about to end. Nothing had ever felt like the full body rush that came along with that kiss. And then her mind caught up with what they were doing. Damn it!

"Wait, wait! Oh my God, wait…" She pushed Holly away again, feeling as if someone had punched her in the gut at the loss of contact. Sophie. She was going to try to adopt Sophie. She was going to give that little girl the best life she could!

Holly was rambling again, as she tended to do when she got nervous, something about dinner, something about tonight. Gail gripped the edge of the table behind her in an attempt to steady herself. Distance, that's what she needed, distance to clear her mind and work through all of this. And so she put off their dinner meeting until the next day.

Fear gripped her as she started to tell Holly about her adoption plans and made her turn away. When she turned back, Holly was sitting down, a sad, sad smile on her face and unshed tears in her eyes. She had expected Holly to be angry, she had expected Holly to tell her she was wrong, she had not expected Holly to hold out to her the one thing she in her heart had wanted most, only one day too late. It hit her like a slap. She had to do everything in her power not to run out the door and never look back. She wanted to, could, would be a better person!

And so, she found herself having perfectly civil dinner conversation at Holly's place over a lovely bottle of Borolo, as promised. They talked about Sophie, about how she had won first place in the science fair at her school last week with her project on forensic fingerprint lifting techniques, based on a book Gail had yet to return to Holly's collection. They talked about Holly's new dream job as a research fellow at a prestigious university teaching hospital with a huge endowment. They fell into long silences, their eyes saying what neither one of them would put into words. It was all well and good until the dishes were cleared and Holly asked if Gail would like to stay and watch a movie. She knew she had to be a better person, to do the right thing.

"Uh, yeah Holly, about that," She began. She could be strong, "I have an early day tomorrow, I really should get going…"

"Oh." The disappointment was clear on Holly's face and in her voice.

"Yeah." Gail said.

They stood there looking into each other's eyes for one eternal moment. Then just like that, it was over and Holly walked her to the front door. She found herself standing on the front step in a shaft of soft golden light as she turned to kiss Holly tenderly on the cheek.

"Good night Holly." She murmured as she turned to go feeling like someone had dropped a brick into her stomach.

She was halfway down the stairs when she felt a hand on her wrist. She froze for a moment and that was all it took. Suddenly they were back inside with a tug and the slam of a door, desperately kissing and tearing at each other's clothing. There were hands and lips and skin, and stumbling into walls, and tripping over an end table with a crash, and landing hard on the couch, and not caring that Holly's teeth left a blissfully painful mark on her throat, and foolishly falling so fast and hard again it set her soul on fire. When the cries of passion and the tears were all spent, and the world came apart only to be remade, they made their way upstairs in silence, to Holly's bed where they fell asleep wrapped tightly around each other.

In the morning when they awoke, they made love again like it was the first time, like it was the last time, like they had nowhere to go and nothing else mattered. From then on they spent each possible moment in each other's company trying to pretend they could hold on like this forever.

Holly was staying at Gail's new two bedroom apartment, the one she helped Gail find, the one where she would never live. She had helped Gail move in last week as the movers came to pack and take all of her belongings from her old townhouse to her new life in San Francisco. Her flight was leaving at five a.m., and she was still awake watching Gail sleep. She had thought about taking a taxi to the airport and leaving a letter on Gail's bathroom mirror, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She watched Gail begin to stir and stretch, adorably scrunching up her face and yawning like a child or a cat. She smiled wistfully at the beautiful woman she was leaving behind.

"Hey." Gail's blue eyes opened, clouded with sleep and smoky with longing.

"Hey." Holly leaned over to kiss Gail on the lips. "You don't have to do this, I could take a taxi you know. You could sleep in a while longer before you have to go to work." She said trying to keep her voice from shaking.

Gail scooted herself into a sitting position against her headboard. She leaned forward cupping Holly's face in her hands, looking deep into her bottomless brown eyes. Holly leaned in expecting to be kissed, but Gail simply took a deep breath as their faces hovered just inches apart.

"I love you Holly." Gail whispered, her eyes glittering with emotion.

These were the words they had never said, the words Holly had always longed to hear Gail say, but now they cut into her heart like the jagged edge of broken glass. She closed her eyes as silent tears began to fall.

"I love you too." She choked out, before she turned and fled.

Gail was sitting at the kitchen counter stoically drinking her coffee when Holly came out of the bathroom all freshly showered and dressed. She smiled and handed Holly a cup before getting up to put Holly's bags in the car.

The ride to the airport was quiet, holding hands most of the way there, both of them afraid to speak. It was three forty six a.m. when Gail met Holly in front of airport security after parking the car. They stood there holding each other for a long time, neither one wanting to say goodbye. Finally Gail took a deep breath and stepped slightly back, her hands still loosely holding on to Holly's waist.

"Well kid, we'll always have Paris." She tried to grin and sound nonchalant, but her eyes began to tear up and her words ended up coming out as a strangled squeak.

Holly tilted her head with a small, crooked smile, cupped Gail's chin in her fingertips and kissed her slowly.

"Here's looking at you, kid." Holly whispered into Gail's lips, before turning to walk away through the gate without looking back.


End file.
